1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to monitoring and controlling of data associated with transactions occurring over a computer network, such as a local area network, a wide area network or the Internet.
2. Description of Related Art
Recent studies indicate that more than 50% of all computer network, e.g., Internet, transactions taking place within an organization are not business related. To this end, 79% of all organizations have detected employee abuses of Internet access privileges. Moreover, 64% of organizations participating in a survey acknowledge financial loses from abuses of Internet access privileges. In addition, because of its ease of use and the misguided perception that the Internet is a secure communication medium, the Internet has engendered an increase in sexual harassment and other hostile workplace issues.
As a result, there is an increasing need to control computer network access to prevent abuses and/or to provide evidence to support employee disciplinary action. In addition, there is a need to reduce or eliminate misuse of a computer network within organizations in order to preserve the network bandwidth for work related purposes. Lastly, there is a need for an enforcement tool to back computer network acceptable use policies. However, at the present time, no means exists that fulfills all of these needs.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to overcome the above problems and others by providing a method for controlling computer network access where each user's access to the computer network can be selectively controlled and records of each user's computer network transactions, especially prohibited transactions, can be stored for subsequent retrieval and analyses. Still other objects of the invention will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon reading and understanding the following detailed description.